


Nothing Left

by LitheFider



Category: Rise of the Guardians (2012)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Blacksand - Freeform, Depression, Fluff and Angst, Humor, Hurt/Comfort, Love, M/M, Quicksand Week, elemental Pitch and Sandy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-12
Updated: 2013-07-12
Packaged: 2017-12-19 07:03:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,035
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/880837
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LitheFider/pseuds/LitheFider
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A Hurt/Comfort fic between Pitch and Sandy, with humor, angst, and light sex.  </p><p>In this, Pitch / Sandy are elemental spirits (aka the book back canon / Golden Age stuff doesn’t exist).  If you recall the Rufftoon comic where Pitch was talking to Lovecraft: ‘I became like YOU’ (started to feel human things the more he was around people / kept a human form) …it is that idea, combined with the elemental Pitch/Sandy AU idea from Taiyari.  I imagine Pitch's true form in this like the 'spidery shadow pitch' from ROTG concept art / Mightyneed's fanart of it.  (Links to all these references are in my author notes)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Nothing Left

**Author's Note:**

> Shadow/Spider Pitch references:  
> http://lithefider.tumblr.com/tagged/shadow-pitch
> 
> Taiyari elemental AU:  
> http://taiyari.tumblr.com/post/45976793374/pfffft-i-just-couldnt-leave-this-idea-alone-i  
> http://taiyari.tumblr.com/post/45969346830/waystoneverland-taiyari-what-if-pitch-and
> 
> Rufftoon Comic:  
> http://rufftoon.tumblr.com/post/46811110041/intermezzo-h-part-2-part-1

 

 Pitch had gone too far.   And then the guardians had to go too far equally so, to stop him. 

 

Pitch Black shaped human fears, molded them like clay, nurtured them.  Not all of his work was ‘negative’ though, and it was only after children began getting hurt and having worse nightmares than ever did they realize, they needed him. 

 

Pitch was gone from their watchful eyes for weeks now.   Was he…dead?  No, as he said, you can’t kill fear.  Pitch was born of the essence of fear, a congealed mass of inky blackness that dripped out of the hearts of men, and no matter how hard you turned the faucet to shut, it always leaked.

 

The Sandman was nervous…he paced in North’s balcony.  He would have gone himself but the others insisted he not go near Pitch’s lair.  They didn’t want him to corrupt him again, they said.  Sandy knew they feared him almost as much as they did Pitch – Sandy was only loosely a guardian.  But he did consider them his friends, different beings as they were.

 

Sandy was unafraid; he knew he and Pitch could never _destroy_ one another.  They could try all day and night, but the same as night and day, they would always dance around each other in balance.   Before Pitch went mad with desperation the two of them performed their tango of black and gold across the night sky.  Joy and fear, dreams and nightmares, ever since the dawn of the earliest human consciousness.   

 

Sandy’s mind came back to reality as the floor fell under him.  He floated in a jump to move to the side of the forming tunnel beneath his footing.  Bunnymund popped out first, then followed the ever-quick Tooth and Jack.  North came out last, and in his arms was who Sandy was waiting to see.

 

Sandy saw not much more than a flash of dripping blackness as North went right for a guest room next to his own quarters.   Everyone followed after, clustering as the tangle of gray limbs and tattered shadow robes was lowered into a bed that dwarfed the frail figure. 

 

The Sandman swallowed as he finally laid eyes on the shadow master.  To a human it would look as if he’d been starved, tortured, then beat up in a back alley and left to die.  Bruised, torn clothes, bleeding, and stuttered breathing from his lips.  But Sandy knew, beings like he and Pitch were not of flesh and blood, or even truly human in form.  The wounds everyone saw were not of the physical, and not something bed rest, milk and cookies could heal. 

 

“Sandy,” North and everyone looked to him, as they too knew this.  Unlike Pitch and Sandy, they had been human once and still retained that same physical quality at their core.  They had never seen Pitch Black like this; so broken and weak.

“Is there anything we can do?” Tooth asked.

 

Sandy shook his head. 

 

Jack gripped his staff tight and felt guilt wash over him.  Maybe if he’d talked to him in the arctic when they fought, actually listened and not just heard the words at face value.  Yes, they had to stop Pitch, but not like this.  This wasn’t what he really wanted.  To kill him would make them no better.  He never thought his own nightmares would turn on him.  And the look on his face as he was dragged away…

 

Sandy put a glowing hand to Jack’s shoulder like he could sense what he was thinking.  He smiled and patted.  ‘Not your fault’ his face read. 

 

Jack smiled weakly.  Sandy scared him a lot less than Pitch…but he still looked upon them like two like freaky, ancient old men.  It was hard to ever really know what was going through their heads.

“You want us to give you some privacy?”  Bunnymund asked Sandy, ears twitching. 

 

Meanwhile on the bed Pitch was barely conscious.  He could hear what everyone was saying, but he was having enough effort just keeping breathing and not moaning in pain.  Last thing he wanted was to lose any more dignity or show weakness more than he already had.  Such a disgrace…to be seen like this.  
  
He finally spoke up in a hoarse groan, “Wasting your time…” He murmured, breathing and turning his head away from as many people as he could.

 

Sandy nodded to everyone.  Yes, being alone would be best.

 

The others all glanced about nervously, but it was pretty obvious Pitch was in no state to be a threat, so they left Sandy alone.  Jack left last, giving a consoling look of ‘I’ll be right outside, just call if you need me.’  Sandy smiled anciently, unconcerned. 

 

Pitch remained turned away from Sandy as the door clicked closed.  Sandy floated up in a fluff of golden sand, settling to sit on the bed.

 

There was a long period of silence.  The two of them were used to that though.  Silence was a language they spoke.  They had lived for centuries, what was a few minutes?

 

“Come to this, has it…” Pitch’s voice was tired, “W-world doesn’t need me anymore…”  
  
< No… > Sandy’s voice was not a voice at all really, but a whisper across the trees. A voice that was hard for most beings to hear, and definitely too ancient for the other guardians to comprehend.   Pitch though, he could hear it.  He could understand Sandman better than any spirit.  
  
“You sided with them, you…”  Pitch curled up his right hand, the lithe fingers shaking, and momentarily elongating into pointed, dark claws, “I thought we were…counterparts…”

 

< We _are_.  You tipped the balance.  I had to tip it back.  > Sandy’s brow furrowed up in sadness.  He had taken no joy in watching Pitch get beat back into the ground.  < I did not know it would go so far. >

 

Pitch shifted and curled tighter, hugging the blanket over his form.  “I just wanted to be seen again.  Believed in fully, like I used to be.”

 

< I know. > 

 

“For too long I’ve been hiding from the smallest light of ‘guardians’….for too long I’ve been starving and wasting away.”

 

< We will think of something. >

 

“It was fun in the beginning wasn’t it?  We were so enthralled by the humans.  We flocked around them and took their forms over time.”  Pitch tilted his head ever so slightly so that Sandy could actually see some of his sloped nose peeking out from behind his hunched shoulders.   “You and I, other spirits, we wanted to mimic them, be more like them.”

 

He swallowed, the tendons in his neck flexing with effort.  “But…I went too far.  I got too close.  I was _corrupted_.   Tainted with human feelings, _desires_ …like a disease eating me away from the inside out.”

Sandy bit his lip, bright gold eyes glassy with compassion as he listened respectfully. 

 

“How did you avoid it?  How did you evade becoming like _me_?”

 

< Pitch, > Sandy sighed in a soft roll of beach surf, as he reached out a hand to Pitch’s blanket covered shoulder.  Pitch resisted, but Sandy held firm, which resulted in the blanket being ripped from him as Pitch tried to roll further away.  Pitch allowed it, and gave up, flopping onto his back as Sandy tossed the blanket aside.  Most of his shadow robe went with it, the already tattered clothes melted like tar and sticking to the tossed blanket in a gooey fashion.      

 

“Look at me Sandy,” Pitch’s chest heaved, using the informal nickname Sandy so rarely heard him use, “I have nothing left.”

 

The shock and horror on Sandy’s face was one Pitch had never seen before.

 

The sorry state of the Boogeyman’s naked form reflected his state of being.  When his nightmares had dragged him off it had been his own fears to eat away at him.  Fear feeding on a center of fear, self cannibalism of the soul.  Deep gashes, scratches, exposed bone across his silvery flesh.  Inky blackness and red blood staining the sheets of the bed.   

 

Pitch’s expression softened slightly, seeing the worry there on his friend’s face.  He was the one being he would call that, a friend.  “You would be the only one to miss me, when I disappear.”  He swallowed wearily, putting a hand out to the Sandman. 

 

Sandy took it and pet the long fingers and bony knuckles, < Pitch, you can’t disappear.  We need you… >

 

Pitch laughed huskily, “Why should I stay in a world where I am rotting away with unfulfillment and loneliness?  I’ll never get what I long for. ”

 

Sandy hesitated, then his voice came through clear as he could make it, like music drifting over a clear spring day, < Because… ** _I_** need you.  > Sandy held his hand close, < I didn’t avoid it...you think I’m so perfect.  I’m not.  I’m just as lonely, needy as you. >

 

Pitch’s silver eyes widened, Sandy, he had become as human as he?  He… _needed_ him?

 

< What would it take, to keep you here? > Sandy didn’t care about the blackness that stuck to him as he crawled up and straddled Pitch’s torso, his face drawing close as a whisper, < What would you say…if I told you, I wished you were **_more_** than my counterpart and rival.  >

 

And then he did something that was never done in the thousands of years they walked the earth together.  A kiss on the forehead, a hand, but never on the lips.  And _that_ is the kiss that Sandy pulled the Boogeyman into.

 

Humans placed so much weight on the simple, physical gesture.  An intimacy between two beings, one said to be electric when the moment, the people, was just right.  And now Pitch knew, really knew ,why.

 

When the instant of shock was over, Pitch’s entire body melted under the warm, sweet lips of the Sandman.  His eyes closed and he groaned with such longing that Sandy had to grasp his head to steady him back into place.  Pitch’s fingers echoed the motion, gripping up tight around Sandy like he might disappear, like it was a dream.

 

The kissing continued with increasing fervor, their pent up need requiring no words to express it.  As if Sandy’s touch was a cure, Pitch revived with each passing minute, a number of the wounds along his skin closing.  His breaths were deep and moaning when their lips finally broke away from each other, only for Sandy to continue down his neck, licking and biting every inch of flesh he could get to.

 

Pitch breathlessly murmured Sandy’s name over and grasped his hands in ever increasing tangles of golden hair.  The shimmering locks curled and extended, and Pitch’s fingers matched them, elongating into dark spidery claws.  As human as they had become, they still remembered their true forms, especially as they became increasingly primal and heated.  Their opposite natures sizzled against one another momentarily, but soon they were intertwined.  A bright curled grin parted an inch from a wide fangy smile, and the kissing continued amongst an impossible tangle of writhing black and gold.

 

Outside in the meeting room the guardians were discussing and worrying and arguing, but it all stopped when a burst like a mini super nova flashed across the workshop, piercing everything with shimmering light.

 

While the Guardians were left smoothing down poofed hair and brushing off glitter (and mostly wondering what the HELL that was), in the guest room lay two very sated spirits.

 

The elemental forms of the spirits cracked like cocoons, breaking away in hard pieces and falling to the floor in black and gold particles.  Remaining there on the bed was their smaller, simpler, and naked, human forms.  Sandy lay atop Pitch, both cuddled up snugly.

 

< Your wounds… > Sandy said lazily, voice a bright whisper.  Indeed, Pitch’s chrome skin was back to an unmarred, healthy silver glow.

 

“I guess…I found something to live for.”  Pitch smirked softly, and then planted a kiss on the peachy forehead in front of him.

 

< We both did, > Sandy repositioned and sighed happily.

 

“Is this what humans would call…afterglow?”

 

< I think love is a nicer word. >  Sandy crooned, nibbling at Pitch’s ear.

 

“I could get used to it.”

 

< I love you too. >

 


End file.
